When 'Free' Games Cost $60,000: The Dark Side of Mobile Gaming
A mate dropped a bombshell on me over coffee yesterday that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. Their sibling managed to rack up a $60,000 credit card debt playing Candy Crush. Let that sink in for a moment - sixty thousand dollars on a “free” mobile game.
This isn’t just about someone being financially irresponsible. This is about a system specifically designed to exploit vulnerable people, and it’s working exactly as intended.
The gaming industry has a euphemism for people like this person’s sibling: “whales.” It’s a term borrowed from casinos, and the parallel isn’t accidental. These companies have literally hired experts from the gambling industry to design their games. They know exactly what they’re doing when they craft those perfectly timed difficulty spikes, the flashy animations when you make a purchase, and the gentle nudges to “just buy this one small thing” to progress.
What really gets under my skin is how normalised this has become. Someone in the discussion thread mentioned that one company was making a million dollars a day, with 97.7% of players spending nothing. Think about that math - they’re extracting enormous wealth from the remaining 2.3% of players, many of whom are likely struggling with addiction issues.
The technical side of me appreciates the sophisticated psychology at play here. These aren’t just games; they’re expertly crafted psychological manipulation tools. They track your behaviour, adjust difficulty in real-time, and even personalise content to hook specific individuals. One user mentioned companies tracking their big spenders on social media to create targeted content - imagine a game company designing virtual items in your favourite football team’s colours because they know you’ll buy them.
But here’s what really frustrates me: when banks won’t give responsible customers reasonable credit increases, yet somehow someone can access enough credit to spend $60,000 on a mobile game. The system seems designed to enable exactly the wrong kind of spending while penalising those who manage their finances responsibly.
Living in a country with strong consumer protection laws, I find myself wondering why we’re so diligent about regulating poker machines but turn a blind eye to these mobile games that use identical psychological techniques. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation wouldn’t let a casino operate without safeguards, yet King Digital Entertainment can deploy the same addiction mechanisms to millions of smartphones without meaningful oversight.
The parallels to gambling are undeniable. Both rely on variable ratio reinforcement schedules, both create artificial scarcity, and both target people during vulnerable moments. The main difference is that you can’t accidentally wander into a casino while waiting for the tram at Southern Cross Station, but you can open Candy Crush anywhere, anytime.
What particularly troubles me is how these companies deflect responsibility. They’ll point to terms of service and parental controls, but these are fig leaves covering a fundamentally exploitative business model. When your entire revenue stream depends on a tiny percentage of users developing spending problems, that’s not a side effect - that’s the feature.
The human cost goes beyond just the financial damage. Families are torn apart, people develop genuine psychological dependencies, and vulnerable individuals with intellectual disabilities or mental health conditions are systematically exploited. One user mentioned knowing someone who helped a person with intellectual impairment who’d lost thousands - they had to install a modified version of the game to stop the financial bleeding.
We need proper regulation here. These games should be subject to the same consumer protections as gambling, including spending limits, cooling-off periods, and clear warnings about the risks. The technology exists to implement these safeguards - we just need the political will to enforce them.
Until then, maybe we should all take a step back and ask ourselves: when did we decide it was acceptable for entertainment companies to deliberately target people with addiction vulnerabilities? And more importantly, what are we going to do about it?
The next time you see someone mindlessly tapping away at their phone on public transport, remember that for a small percentage of them, that “free” game might be anything but.